Maybe “Netflix and chill” isn’t a millennial euphemism for having sex, but actually does refer to binge watching the latest popular show.
That’s at least what a new study circulated Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research appears to suggest. In a study released Monday, economists from the University of Delaware and Reed College provided some answers to the hotly contested debate over whether watching television gets in the way of other leisure activities, such as having sex.
The authors, Adrienne Lucas and Nicholas Wilson, find that while owning TV won’t kill your sex life outright, it will affect how often you and your partner get intimate. The findings, which surveyed 4 million people across 80 countries and five continents, suggest people who own a TV are 6 percent less likely on any given week to have had sex.
Authors of the study say this result is a “statistically significant yet not particularly large association.” They also say that the findings can affect policymaking in a variety of ways. Countries that want to affect fertility rates or lower sexually transmitted disease can consider subsidies, taxes, or information campaigns to either get people to buy more TVs or to get them to buy fewer of them. For instance, the study suggests that men with televisions were more likely to use a condom the last time they had sex.
“Understanding this relationship is crucial for family planning and disease reduction or elimination,” the authors write.
